Bétonsalon — Center for Art and Research invites stu­dents from the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris working at the Atelier Claude Closky to con­ceive an exhi­bi­tion in its space for an evening and a day.

Opening June 1, 2016, 6pm — 9pmThe exhi­bi­tion con­tinued, the next day, June 2, from 11am to 7pm

The studio, directed by Claude Closky, aims to develop stu­dents thinking and prac­tice through inten­sive, con­crete exper­i­men­ta­tions that involve com­paring the approaches of all stu­dents, regard­less of their level of study, to make use of art his­tory and the imme­diate envi­ron­ment of the art­works in pro­cess. There are approx­i­mately twenty hang­ings throughout the aca­demic year. Each stu­dent pre­sents to the group a piece of their own work that they con­sider fin­ished, whether it be an old or new art­work. A dif­ferent stu­dent is respon­sible for exhibiting their studio mem­bers work. It is up to the col­leagues in the studio to sug­gest a direc­tion for the group and design the hanging of the exhi­bi­tion in response to the answers received.

Shortcuts and para­bles

In 1972, the space probe Pioneer 10 was launched from Cape Canaveral (Florida). In an attempt to com­bine sci­en­tific and artistic research, Carl and Linda Salzmann Sagan (astronomer and writer) pro­posed to NASA to etch a drawing on the struc­ture of the probe. The drawing was etched into an anodized gold and alu­minum plate. It rep­re­sented the posi­tion of man in the solar system and the var­ious rela­tion­ships to scale between objects and fig­ures.

The desire and the pre­cise cal­cu­la­tions per­mitted the mea­sure­ment of the expe­di­tion—whether through the amount of fuel required, the number of kilo­me­ters trav­elled, or the mate­rial strength of the space­craft. Alongside addi­tional fac­tors, born of con­tin­gen­cy—the prob­a­bility that they will reach extrater­res­trial life or, fur­ther­more their under­standing of the engraved sym­bols. Yet, the most impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion was pre­sent at the takeoff: the deter­mi­na­tion of the tra­jec­tory of infor­ma­tion.

This tra­jec­tory of infor­ma­tion is also the objec­tive of the stu­dents of Claude Closky’s work­shop at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in the frame­work of an invi­ta­tion by Bétonsalon — Center for Art and Research. For one month, var­ious aspects of the pro­ject will be devel­oped to become full objec­tives. The arrange­ment of the work in the space is defined in func­tion to its impli­cated move­ments. The first move­ment is that of thought, which allows for us to under­stand the work as a unity, as a strength, the second one leads the pro­cess and tra­jec­tory of the work in the space.

Without hier­archy or pri­ority of time, the two pro­gram schemes of move­ment are cod­i­fied as hooks with each artistic approach in rela­tion to the body and its aspi­ra­tions. Outside of con­sid­ering levels of edu­ca­tion or the quality of the treat­ment or value of the employed mate­rials, the exhi­bi­tion invites us to con­sider the body and its propen­sity for knowl­edge through artistic approaches.